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Iran is on “death ground” as Sarah Paine would say. It’s a TERRIBLE idea to put your enemy on death ground because all they can do is fight now. We’re going to
by vrosas 7mo ago
Iran is on “death ground” as Sarah Paine would say. It’s a TERRIBLE idea to put your enemy on death ground because all they can do is fight now. We’re going to keep bombing them until there’s nothing left. Iran is going to end up looking like Afghanistan (a broken country of small feudal states) at the end of this.
Edit: By Iran, I'm referring to what's left of the current Iranian administration and military, not the entirety of the Iranian people.
- RobertoG 7mo agoOr, here me out, you could just leave and go home. But I suppose that's unthinkable.
- keiferski 7mo agoNo, this isn't what Paine means by death ground. Paine used that to refer to Soviet citizens/soldiers that knew they would be erased/eliminated if they lost. The Iranians don't think that their opponents want to eliminate their entire civilization.
- malfist 7mo ago[flagged]
- keiferski 7mo agoSure, those things exist, but let's not pretend that modern war is remotely comparable to the Eastern Front of WW2.
- rayiner 7mo ago[flagged]
- malfist 7mo ago[flagged]
- giraffe_lady 7mo ago[flagged]
- rayiner 7mo agoI’m sorry that my opposition to the Islamists who just helped overthrow my home country’s government last year offends your sensibilities. I’m sure I’d share your liberal universalism if the last time I left my country wasn’t under armed guard because my people are prone to violent rioting. It must be easy to be a cultural relativist when you don’t actually know anything about how dysfunctional culture mire societies in chains from which escape is impossible.
- giraffe_lady 7mo ago[flagged]
- rayiner 7mo agoCultural relativism is a liberal concept; orthogonal to socialism/communism.
- rayiner 7mo agoIt’s not even remotely similar. We’re talking about countries where (almost) everyone is Muslim and Muslims control the political system, police, etc. Moderate Muslims who can’t reasonably be accused of “Islamophobia” understand that political Islam is a danger and often take extreme measures to keep it in check. Projecting American racial politics onto other countries is an extremely bad (and bizarrely ethnocentric) way to try to understand how the world works.
- UncleMeat 7mo ago[flagged]
- malfist 7mo ago
- orwin 7mo agoWe talk about Mosques shooting, women and girls wearing the hijab attacked/assaulted in the streets (being a woman in the streets after the sun is down always is a risk, if you're wearing anything Muslim-looking, you multiply that risk,), and a lot of aggression here.
- oa335 7mo agoThe shah of Iran heavily suppressed Islam as well…and It led directly to the Islamic revolution. Suppression of normal political and religious expression leads to more extremists, not less. When i talk about Islamophobia, I think about the time when my mom was run off the road by a couple of guys in a truck yelling slurs, or the woman who was stabbed walking home from our mosque, or the bulletholes in our mosque windows, or the weekly bomb/death threats. You wield your ethnicity like a bludgeon to “win” these types of arguments but you are quite remote from the actual experience of others who look like you.
- rayiner 7mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- UncleMeat 7mo ago[flagged]
- rayiner 7mo agoYou understand that Egypt is a Muslim country and El Sisi is a Muslim, right? This is a discussion about what moderate Muslims must do in countries like Egypt and Bangladesh to keep their countries from ending up like Iran.
- donkeybeer 7mo agoOf course but Iran or Egypt pose no threat to me. I'd believe you if you said it was more urgent to do the same to christians in the USA and west.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- _DeadFred_ 7mo agoI can't help but think the 'death to America' chants going away plus the end of Iranian funding for Islamic terror/Islamic based violence will help fight Islamophobic perceptions in the US. My entire life it's seemed like a very visible section of Islam wanted my country/the West destroyed which by extension has influenced my opinion of Islam. I think a secular Iran is going to improve the perception of Islam in the West. I feel like the US and Iran have been at low level war my entire life and that Iran by their actions/words have felt the same.
- AlecSchueler 7mo ago> I can't help but think the 'death to America' chants going away With the recent actions of the US you can bet those chants won't go away for a long time.
- tstrimple 7mo agoThe bombings will continue until sentiment about the USA improves.
- AlecSchueler 7mo agoSentiment about the USA will worsen with every bomb.
- _DeadFred_ 7mo agoWere they ever going away before? Like I said this has been going on my entire life. It has shaped my worldview, especially in relation to Islam.
- AlecSchueler 7mo ago> Were they ever going away before? Was the US ever not meddling in middle Eastern affairs before? Just because the old strategy wasn't working doesn't mean double down on it and see if it sticks this time. Try something different, something that isn't certain to backfire!
- rayiner 7mo agoYou’re overlooking the fundamental difference between Iranian society and Afghan society. In Afghanistan, the U.S. was trying to bomb a place that was always a collection of small feudal states into being a functioning country. In Iran, it’s trying to dislodge a theocracy that’s taken over a country that’s had orderly, centralized administration for almost two thousand years. I wouldn’t bet on either approach working. But a good outcome in Afghanistan was always completely hopeless. A good outcome in Iran is merely unlikely.
- vrosas 7mo agoI agree with you that Afghanistan is a much different country. My fear is that once the entire centralized theocracy is bombed out of existence it will open the door for localize warlords to begin carving up territory. The alternative is a Khamenei 2.0 character stepping in. But then the question is, will Israel/the US not just assassinate them too? I don't know but there's no way this ends well.
- rayiner 7mo agoI hate the idea of nation building. But I’ve long thought that if there was any Muslim country where we could pull off the feat we did in Germany and Japan—turning it into a stable democracy—it’s Iran. But that would take boots on the ground, which I don’t support. (I don’t support the assassination either to be clear.)
- 1718627440 7mo ago> where we could pull off the feat we did in Germany Germany was already a democracy just 12 years prior and has been a loose union of constitutional monarchies for a century before. Just saying.
- rayiner 7mo agoThat’s my point. Germany already had a developed state with burgeoning democratic government. So it wasn’t a tall order to reboot it as a stable democracy. Japan likewise had already developed a modern state under Emperor Meiji.
- cucumber3732842 7mo ago> Iran is going to end up looking like Afghanistan (a broken country of small feudal states) at the end of this. Soooo, lateral move from 1999 with the benefit of the theocratic regime that rules over those states having a bit of hindsight this time and being keenly aware that they ought not to let themselves be exploited puppet or proxy for larger international conflict? I'm not saying Afghanistan on track to be a shining beacon of modernity in an otherwise backwards region but things are looking pretty up for them and I wish them the best. An equivalent for Iran would be what? Next guy shows up in charge, promises a few token reforms. Bombs stop falling, protestors go home, business as usual resumes but with a little more normalcy toward the rest of the world.